


Only Hearts and Bones and Blood

by unwhithered



Series: Dreamers & Sailors [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, CT-21-0408 | Echo Lives, Episode: s03e20 Citadel Rescue, Gen, Graphic Description of Injury, Physical Disability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25170454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/pseuds/unwhithered
Summary: At first Echo looks like little more than a smoking heap of plastoid, barely even human in shape. If Ahsoka couldn’t feel the tenuous thread of life hanging on beneath all that pain she might have left him for dead just as her Grandmaster ordered. But he is alive, and he has been with her from the beginning. She won’t leave him if there is any hope for his survival.Or, the Citadel Rescue goes very differently when Ahsoka refuses to leave Echo behind. Getting off the sith-damned planet is only the first painful step in saving his life.Stands alone from the rest of the series.
Relationships: CT-21-0408 | Echo & Ahsoka Tano, CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555 & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano
Series: Dreamers & Sailors [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/600658
Comments: 100
Kudos: 249





	1. The World Don't Speak For Us

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is complete and needs just a bit of editing. Chapters will be posted weekly. I'm gonna get back into this fandom even if it kills me.
> 
> Warning for both Echo's internalized ableism and ableism from non-main characters.
> 
> Fic and chapter titles from Giants by Matt Nathanson.

Ahsoka’s palms are sweaty on her lightsabers as she spins them to deflect blaster bolts raining down from every direction. Between the sound of her own blood rushing in her montrals and the cacophony of battle all around her, she barely hears the explosion. It’s a flare of fire and smoke in her peripheral vision that has barely registered when the pain hits her, a wave of burning so intense it feels like it’s melting the flesh from her bones - except it isn’t her bones being charred. She breathes through it. 

The war has taught her how to fight through death and pain coming from every side, but she still feels every fallen trooper in the Force. Even if she could tune it out entirely, she wouldn’t. Already today she has felt the losses of too many of her men inside the Citadel, lives sacrificed for the greater good, but this one feels closer to home. And it doesn’t fade like the previous lives snuffed out.

“Echo!” 

Ahsoka flinches at the anguish in Fives’ voices - and she knows it is Fives without even looking. They joined the 501st at nearly the same time, and Fives and Echo are some of the few surviving troopers from her first days in the war. She would recognize him anywhere, even if she was Force-blind, just as she now recognizes the fading flicker of Echo’s life energy across the battlefield.

Obi-wan’s voice sounds very far away, though he’s only a few feet from where Ahsoka feels rooted to the ground. “We have to go now. Come, Ahsoka.”

“No,” she replies, a defiant whisper that grows into a shout as she shakes off Anakin’s hand on her shoulder. “No, Master, Echo is still alive! We can’t leave him here.”

She doesn’t wait for a response and ignores the shouts that follow her. Sure, she’ll be disciplined if she survives the mad dash across the landing pad toward what remains of their shuttle, but it can’t be much worse than what Anakin is doubtless already planning as punishment for sneaking onto the mission in the first place. At least this way it will be worth it. 

At first Echo looks like little more than a smoking heap of plastoid, barely even human in shape. If Ahsoka couldn’t feel the tenuous thread of life hanging on beneath all that pain she might have left him for dead just as her Grandmaster ordered. But he is alive, and he has been with her from the beginning. She won’t leave him if there is any hope for his survival.

Sliding the last few feet on her knees to avoid a flurry of blaster fire from one of the few droids that survived, she finally reaches him. The pulse in his throat is faint but there, beneath charred skin sticky with blood. Ahsoka can’t look at the burned mess of Echo’s face without feeling nauseous - the smell of charred flesh is already sickening enough - and the extent of his other wounds is hidden beneath melted, twisted plastoid armor. She has no time to peel back the plates and apply what few bandages she carries in her belt pouches. Even with Fives and Rex moving belatedly to cover her she is too vulnerable, only half shielded by the remains of their shuttle. Instead she pulls out a length of cord from her belt and fashions a makeshift harness beneath Echo’s arms and across his chest, and another around his legs - one of which is not quite pointing in the right direction.

“Kriff!” Ahsoka growls when a blaster bolt wings her shoulder. It’s superficial, but it’s a sign. Time to go. “This is gonna hurt, vod’ika,” she warns, though Echo shows no signs of consciousness. She doesn’t bother to apologize for the pain she is about to inflict. Standing, she drags Echo with her. The average trooper is at least a foot taller than Ahsoka and easily twice her weight, and ARC training has added still more muscle to Echo’s frame, but this isn’t the first time Ahsoka has carried one of them. A touch of the Force helps her lift him by the harnesses and settle his weight across her narrow shoulders. It’s awkward for her and doubtless painful for him, but it’s the best she can do without time and help, neither of which she has.

The extra weight barely slows her on the frantic dash across open terrain to rejoin the rest of the party. Fives and then Rex fall in behind her as she passes them, covering their retreat, and she catches one glimpse of Anakin’s furious expression before he turns toward their escape route. With all of her attention focused on staying on her feet as they scramble down a steep slope into one of the many canyons surrounding the Citadel, Ahsoka has no chance to defend herself for quite some time.

\---------------

While Master Kenobi and Anakin appeal to the Council for assistance, Ahsoka leans against the nearest rock wall and desperately attempts to catch her breath. Their flight from the Citadel has been an all out sprint over rough ground for over an hour, and the concentration and Force required to keep Echo balanced over her shoulders and maneuver the treacherous terrain at the same time is beginning to wear on her on the heels of their already strenuous mission. Carefully stretching her aching but unburdened shoulders, she watches as Fives peels off as much of Echo’s melted plastoid armor as he can.

“How bad is it?”

“Chest plate is fused to his blacks, maybe even the skin underneath,” Fives grunts without raising his head. “And he’s bleeding into his right boot. Kriff, he’s bleeding  _ bad _ . I need a tourniquet.”

Ahsoka hesitates over her small med pack. “If you tourniquet it he’ll lose the leg.” She isn’t much of a medic, but she knows that much.

“If I don’t he’ll bleed to death before we get off this Sith damned planet.”

_ Better part-droid than dead _ , Ahsoka thinks as she digs out the tourniquet and a handful of syringes. While Fives does the messy work of tying off Echo’s bloody leg, dooming its functionality in the name of saving his brother’s life, Ahsoka kneels and jabs him in the neck with a double dose of painkillers. If nothing else, they should keep him from waking up and struggling for the next few hours. If it takes much longer than that to make their escape there won’t be much either of them can do to help Echo. 

“I can take a turn at carrying him,” Fives offers, finally looking up and meeting her eyes across Echo’s body. Without his helmet he looks young and exhausted, and just a little scared. Ahsoka’s heart aches with the knowledge that Fives is in real danger of becoming the last survivor of his squad.

“No.” Ahsoka shakes her head firmly and uses her Commander Tano voice to drive her words home. “If you slow us down, if you get hurt, they’ll leave you behind. Skyguy won’t ever leave me behind. It has to be me.” It’s a horrible truth. A monstrous thing to have to say about her Master, perhaps the being she trusts most in the universe - but she cannot trust him with this. Clones are expendable to the Grand Army of the Republic and while Anakin would never say so, and does his best to treat the troopers as individuals with value, the horrors of the war have forced him to internalize that message to some extent. Ahsoka knows that it is the relative freedom being a padawan grants her to associate with the clones as closer to equals and know them as friends that has insulated her from that cold outlook on their lives. She does not intend to give it up.

“Then I’ll watch your back, So’ika.”

“Good. Now help me pick him up, I think we’re about to move.”

\------------

Sweat pours from Ahsoka’s brow as she hops over yet another crevice filled with viscous yellow-orange magma. Echo’s body jolts on her shoulders, eliciting a low groan from the unconscious trooper. Soft noises and small twitches of his limbs have been growing more frequent over the past hour, as their rushed retreat jostles him painfully against Ahsoka’s bony shoulders. He’s not the only one in a less than ideal position - his weight and armor are pinching at her lekku, sending unpredictable jolts of pain and numbness into her neck. More than once already she has nearly dropped him.

When droids suddenly box them in next to a steep drop, she finally has to. Despite her best efforts, he hits the ground near the ledge heavily as she scrambles to draw her lightsabers. She barely deflects the first blaster bolts in time. Taking up a defensive stance over his body, Ahsoka looks desperately for help, but Obi-wan and Anakin are already descending the cliff on cables with Tarkin while the rest of their ragged band prepares to follow or engages the enemy.

“Kriff it all,” Ahsoka hisses between her teeth as a bolt barely misses Echo’s head. “Captain!” she shouts. Then, more desperately, “Rex! I can’t fight and protect Echo. Get him to the bottom, I’ll cover you.”

Rex hesitates, though few else would be able to spot it. He’s still moving fluidly, taking out oncoming crab like droids with ease, but Ahsoka can feel his focus on her. Already he’s covered for her while she ran to rescue Echo, and now she’s asking him once again to go against all of his training, to risk their mission for a trooper who might well die before the rescue ship lands. But it’s not just any trooper. It’s Echo. And it’s Ahsoka asking, her 501st-blue eyes wide and pleading, her jaw set stubbornly. After only a few seconds he breaks away from the assault and runs to her, stooping to lift Echo with a grunt of effort before deploying his grappling hook.

“I’d better see you at the bottom, little’un,” he orders with a glare she can  _ feel _ even through his helmet before he disappears over the edge. Ahsoka has no time to reply, already leaping into the fray, striking at droids with arms that are dead tired from steadying Echo’s weight for hours. 

When she finally retreats over the edge, leaving R2’s droids to hold off the enemy alone, she is just in time to see a cable snap. Two troopers plunge toward the ground below while the rest of their company watches, stunned. Ahsoka, too tired to effectively wall herself off from the Force, feels their rush of terror just as she had felt Echo’s pain. Without thinking she throws her hands out wildly, the Force rushing through her. The troopers jerk to a sudden stop ten feet above the ground, wobble, and then fall the rest of the way as Ahsoka is distracted by the searing pain of a blaster bolt winging her arm.

A ten foot drop with armor to break the fall doubtless hurts, but it won’t kill them. Ahsoka severs her cable and drops the rest of the way to meet them, landing heavily and groaning with the shock it sends up her legs to meet the pain spreading down her side from her burned arm. Distracted by the pain, she almost misses Anakin’s distressed shout and the heavy footsteps coming toward her.

“Ahsoka, you’re hurt.” It’s the first time her Master has spoken to her directly since she defied orders to rescue Echo. Exhausted and in pain, Ahsoka wants nothing more than to lean in to the gentle hand he puts on her shoulder and bask in the worry and care in his voice. Instead she shakes him off and summons a weak grin.

“I’m fine, Master. It’s only a flesh wound.”

Anakin looks ready to argue with her, his brow furrowed and mouth already open, when Obi-wan snaps at them both. “Anakin, Ahsoka, we must not delay. Get those men on their feet and get going.”

Though Anakin’s frown remains, he obeys his old Master and stoops to help the stunned troopers to their feet. Ahsoka leaves him to it and goes to reclaim Echo from Rex, doing her best to block out the white noise of her aching body.

_ There is no pain _ , she thinks stubbornly,  _ there is only the Force _ .


	2. The Walls Are Closing In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah so I finally finished the last season last night and it made me mad and heartbroken so here's the next chapter early.
> 
> Comments keep me motivated to blast thru these edits faster, btw.

As it turns out, there is pain and there is  _ also _ the Force. There are also creatures tailing them, their blood curdling howls growing closer with every minute. Ahsoka forces her leaden limbs to move just a little faster along the treacherous path between a steep drop and a river of lava, tightening her grip on the harnesses securing Echo when he shifts restlessly. She really does not feel like being eaten by oversized house pets today.

When Master Kenobi and Anakin peel off to serve as a distraction Ahsoka’s anxiety spikes. Tarkin has been making unsubtle comments about Echo slowing them down since they escaped the Citadel and without Anakin to dismiss his concerns, she is outranked and alone in her defense of the wounded trooper, since Master Piell does not seem particularly sympathetic to her cause. What Master Kenobi would call a  _ bad feeling _ crawls up her spine, but whether it’s about her companions or their pursuers, she isn’t sure.

“Fives,” she pants, flagging down the trooper who has been watching her back. “Take Echo. I think I’m going to need my hands soon.”

Fives, having learned better than to question a Jedi’s instincts by now, immediately holsters his weapons and stoops to take Echo off of her shoulders and heft his brother over his own broad back. Despite hours of fleeing across rough terrain, he makes it look easy. Then again, the troopers were bred and trained for exactly this kind of strain.

Without Echo’s weight bearing down on her, Ahsoka takes a full breath for what feels like the first time in hours. When she straightens up her neck and back crack painfully and almost loudly enough to distract from the mechanical clicking coming up behind them. A half formed curse dies on Ahsoka’s lip as she ignites her lightsabers and spins. Already, Master Piell has volunteered her to stay behind with him and fight the droids, though her arms shake when she drops into a fighting stance. She wants to refuse like a petulant child - she’s too tired, she’s already hurt, aren’t there others who can fight this battle? But she has disobeyed too many times already today. She must do her duty.

“Don’t fall behind, and don’t leave Echo, no matter what,” she orders Fives, getting only a sharp nod in response before they come under fire. 

The crab legged droids are awkward and slow on their feet, but their blasters fire just as fast as any other. Ahsoka spends more time dodging and deflecting than attacking while Piell cuts his way through their enemies like butter. For every three droids he disposes of, Ahsoka cuts down only one of her own, until she is battling with the last one left while Piell catches his breath. She dispatches the hulking machine with a thrust into its central processing unit and nearly collapses along with the Sith-damned thing, swaying on her feet.

Only then does she hear the snarling.

“Master, no!” Ahsoka cries out, turning just in time to watch Piell fall beneath the weight of an anooba. By the time she gets there, it is too late. The beast dies on her blade while Piell bleeds out into the red dirt - and it’s all her fault. If only she wasn’t so weak, so slow. So distracted by her own desire to save Echo that another has ended up dying in his place. “Master Piell! I have to get help.”

“No,” he replies weakly, beckoning her closer. “Don’t leave. Listen to me carefully, child. The information, I need you to deliver it back to the council.”

“I should find Anakin or Obi-wan, they need to hear this,” she argues, though she drops to her knees beside the dying Master anyway.

“No. You must listen.”

“But I wasn’t even assigned to the team. I lied just so I could be a part of the mission, and now I’ve screwed it all up.”

“Whether you were meant to be on this mission or not, you are now the most important part of it,” Piell says, and before she can protest again he begins reciting numbers and coordinates. Ahsoka closes her eyes and silently mouths each word. Training at the Temple had involved seemingly infinite and pointless memory exercises and for the very first time she finds herself grateful for them. Master Piell takes his last breath because of her failures - now she must finish his mission, and keep Echo alive, so that his sacrifice was not for nothing.

\------------

“I don’t take orders from you,” Fives snaps, glaring at Tarkin through his helmet. Widening his stance, Fives drops one hand to his still holstered blaster in warning, the other keeping Echo balanced like a sack of duracrete over his shoulder. Now would really be a good time to have both hands free.

“Your Jedi are nowhere to be seen! That means  _ I _ am the ranking officer.” Tarkin spits back. He’s a foul little man, bitter and entitled and far too sure of himself, and Fives would like nothing more than to put him in his face. For now, he simply holds his ground. “And as your Captain, I order you to leave that clone or  _ you _ will be left behind for slowing us down. Every moment you delay puts our vital mission in danger.”

Fives has a smart retort on his tongue and his blaster half out of its holster, ready to go down swinging to follow Ahsoka’s orders and protect his brother, when he is cut off by a voice so very similar to his own and yet recognizable anywhere. 

“ _ Actually _ , Captain Tarkin, it appears I’m the ranking officer here.” Rex has taken his helmet off and is resting it against his hip, one of his twin blasters twirling casually in his free hand. His golden eyes are narrowed into threatening slits above a smirk that is anything but humorous. For a moment Fives is confused, his head tilted to communicate as much to his Captain. When he remembers the promotion that had never quite succeeded in changing Rex’s title he can’t help his bark of laughter. “The General never can seem to remember to call me Commander, and what the General does, the men follow. But don’t worry,  _ Captain _ \- you can call me Commander if it makes you feel better.”

Tarkin sputters, his pointed face turning an ugly shade of red before he manages to regain control of himself. “I will not take orders from a clone!”

“As you like. But my  _ men _ will not take orders from you,” Rex replies with a dismissive shrug. Fives has never seen his brother treat a mongrel officer with such disrespect before, despite Rex’s quiet grumblings about them when he thinks no one can overhear. “We’ll do as our jetii ordered, boys. We don’t leave anyone behind. Unless Captain Tarkin would rather make his way to the rendezvous point alone rather than letting us slow him down…”

“Well, hurry then,” Tarkin huffs, his face once again red and dotted with sweat.

Fives lingers a moment longer, waiting until his own Captain gives the order before he slides his blaster back into the holster and takes off once more at a slow jog.

\--------------

If there is any tension lingering between Tarkin and the troopers, Ahsoka is too distracted to notice. Guilt is gnawing at her guts at the thought of Master Piell’s body abandoned in the wreckage of droids and anoobas but there is no time for funerals and mourning. There is barely even time to explain what happened when they reunite with Obi-wan and Anakin, her words bitten out between grunts of effort as Fives resettles Echo’s weight across her shoulders. His dead weight feels heavier than it did just a few hours ago, though if anything he should be lighter thanks to lost blood and the weapons and equipment Fives appears to have stripped off of him while she was gone. Ahsoka doesn’t know how much longer she can keep going like this.

As long as she has to, she supposes.

\-------------

Ahsoka has never been happier to see a LAAT/i in her life. She barely makes the leap from the small island in the lava to the crowded deck, tumbling between the feet of troopers still firing down on their attackers and landing in a tangled heap of limbs. Distantly, she hears a familiar voice shouting for a medic, the roar of engines as the pilot heads for the upper atmosphere, and the fading buzz of blaster fire. They could still die, Ahsoka knows, shot down in a firey blaze - but it’s out of her hands.

Only when warm, callused fingers begin probing at her most obvious blaster burns does Ahsoka stir. Cracking her eyes open, she glares at the unfamiliar medic hovering over her. “Examine my man first,” she commands in a hoarse whisper, glancing meaningfully at the crumpled heap of limbs and armor beside and half-under her.

“This trooper is unsalvageable, sir,” the medic replies, his unfamiliar bucket still hovering over her. “I have conducted triage. I am administering medical care where it will save a life.”

“My life is not in danger.” Ahsoka pushes up on one elbow with a grunt of effort and struggles to disentangle herself from the cords lashing Echo’s body to hers. She can still feel his life force, weak and thready and swirling with pain, but still there. “Examine my man. As long as he is breathing, it’s your job to keep him that way, understand? Fives? Fives! Do not let this medic stop working on Echo unless I say otherwise.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” the soot-stained, exhausted ARC Trooper replies, looming over the medic with one scuffed glove resting on his blaster. “You heard the Commander, vod. Do whatever it takes to keep my brother alive. The Commander didn’t haul him off of that Sith-damned planet just to watch him die thanks to your negligence.”

“Sir, uh, yes, sir,” the medic agrees, snapping off a salute before beginning to poke and prod at the crumpled heap beside her. 

When Echo groans in pained protest Ahsoka lets out a sigh of relief and lets her arm slide out from under herself. The next breath she takes - stale recycled ship air that tastes cool and clean compared to the ash she has been breathing all day - hitches on the way in and shudders its way out. Her whole body trembles with pain and exhaustion Ahsoka hadn’t dared let herself feel when there were lives hanging in the balance, and she’s only vaguely aware of Anakin kneeling by her head and gathering her into his arms, knows that he’s talking but can’t make out individual words. 

Everything fades in and out, the world alternately too bright and loud or unnervingly muted and dim. She struggles to keep her eyes focused on Echo as the ship sways and troopers shuffle around them. The unfamiliar medic works diligently under Fives’ watchful eye, but they all know that there is only so much he can do on the dirty floor of a LAAT/i, when half of Echo’s wounds are hidden beneath plastoid that has fused to his flesh. They’ll be able to do more for him once they get to the ship.

They  _ have to  _ be able to do more for him when they get to the ship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me on tumblr, same username. I'm drowning in clone feels at the moment.


	3. We Climb and They Descend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for discussion of withdrawing medical care from an injured/disabled character 
> 
> So you know how I was like "updates once a week" and "it has three chapters"? Both a lie, apparently. Editing got out of hand and turned into writing new content instead. Have 2k+ of stuff that didn't exist before to bridge us to the actual ending in (hopefully) chapter 4.
> 
> Also fair warning I haven't done a thorough edit of this section and I typed it right after getting acrylics for the first time in forever. I apologize about the inevitable typos.

Fives watches Ahsoka go limp in Skywalker’s arms as the gunship lands and the jedi surges to his feet, and panic grips his chest. Everything they have done to save Echo has been under the Commander’s orders and contrary to the General’s. If she’s no longer capable of arguing for his life…

Fives swallows down the fear of losing his last batchmate and refocuses his glare on the medic hovering awkwardly over Echo. “What are you waiting for, vod? Let’s get him on a stretcher.  _ Move _ .” 

Fortunately Skywalker doesn’t even look over his shoulder as he carves his own path through the disembarking troopers toward the medical wing. The medic looks at Fives’ pauldrons and kama and makes the wise decision not to argue. Between the two of them they load Echo onto a hover stretcher, the medic comming ahead to ready a bacta tank while Fives shoulders his way through the crowder hangar in the lead, Echo’s unresponsive body bobbing along between them.

Everything after that is a blur of medical terminology Fives doesn’t understand and the gruesome stench of burned flesh. He watches every second of it anyway, making sure Echo receives the best treatment the GAR can provide. In the end it takes three medics and too many sharp implements to peel back Echo’s armor and blacks and reveal the extent of his injuries, and when Fives sees the raw flesh beneath, muscle exposed where the skin has been pulled away with the plastoid, he vomits into the closest washbasin. 

If there was anything left in his stomach he would have been sick again at the sight of Echo’s right left. The blue-black flesh below his mid-thigh is almost worse than the burns on his chest and face, because that part is Fives’  _ fault _ . The tourniquet kept Echo’s blood in his body, but it has lost him his leg, and Fives finally turns away from the viewing window when the medics start discussing  _ removing the necrotic limb _ before dousing him in bacta. He will never forget the sound of the droid operated bone saw, no matter how long he lives or how many horrors he witnesses.

\----------

Ahsoka doesn’t remember passing out when the ship lands roughly in the hangar of Master Plo’s flagship, nor does she remember waking. At some point she becomes aware that her eyes have been open, staring up into the bright white lights above her, for an indeterminate amount of time. Everything hurts in a way that makes it impossible to identify what’s actually wrong, impossible to do anything but lie still and remember how to breathe through aching lungs as the world slowly fades back in around her. 

Sounds seem very far away. There are voices she recognizes and knows, distantly, that she should care about, but only one in a handful of words makes any sense. “Burns” and “60 percent” and “Kamino,” none of which mean anything to her in the painful place between unconsciousness and waking. 

“Echo,” though, that means something. “Echo,” in two different accents, both times spoken in tones that send shivers down her spine.

Ahsoka bolts upright in her narrow hospital bed, her hoarse curses intertwined with the sudden wailing of monitoring equipment displeased with the spike in her blood pressure and heart rate. She manages to stumble out of bed and past the privacy curtain, dressed in nothing but her underclothes and bacta patches, before anyone else in the room reacts. “Echo,” she croaks, her throat on fire.

Rex, always one step ahead of everyone else, catches Ahsoka as her knees buckle. Instead of ushering her back into bed, he scoops her up and deposits her in a chair beside the only occupied bacta tank in the medical bay. “Echo,” she breathes, and he has to catch her again when she overestimates her reach. With Rex’s hand on her shoulder keeping her steady, Ahsoka is able to press her hand to the clear, cool surface of the tank. Her breath shudders painfully. “Oh, you’re alive.”

\-----------

“Frankly, sir, we have no idea how he’s survived,” Stitch, one of the 104th’s medics, repeats for Ahsoka’s benefit. There are bags under the man’s eyes and bloodstains on his medical uniform. Rex would feel bad for him, if only Fives and Rex himself hadn’t spent the last six hours alternately threatening and cajoling Stitch and his comrades into providing Echo the medical care he needs until the man had  _ called their general on them _ . 

Anakin, circling the bacta tank to stand at Ahsoka’s other shoulder, huffs and waves his hand dismissively. “But he did, thanks to Ahsoka. So let’s try to keep him that way.”

“It’s against protocol, sir,” Stitch replies. It’s the same conversation he and Rex have been having for two hours. Every time Echo’s blood pressure drops, or his heart falters, or a new round of meds is due to be administered, Stitch - not long off Kamino, from what Rex can tell - has made the same argument. It takes all of Rex’s self control not to shake the man when he starts in on it again. “CT-1409 has an exceedingly low chance of surviving through the night even with our most aggressive interventions. If he does, he has a zero percent chance of regaining adequate function to return to full duties. I have already had to override the medical droids’ triage protocols to continue his treatment thus far, and he is consuming resources designated for use on troops with better prognoses.”

Rex watches from the corner of his eye as Anakin’s lips press into a thin line and his eyes narrow. Not so long ago, this man - his General, his  _ friend _ , if such a thing is allowed between clones and jedi - had been ready to leave Echo for dead on that Force forsaken planet. Then again, Rex had been, too. There’s something very different about making a split second decision to guarantee the success of a mission that may save millions of sentient lives, and standing over a hospital bed discussing a single life or death as if it can be understood as a handful of statistics.

“What, exactly, did you call me down here to ask me to do, soldier?” Anakin finally asks, his voice cold and flat in a way that raises the hairs on the back of Rex’s neck. Beside him, all of the color has drained from Ahsoka’s face.

“Sir, I am requesting that you remove your men from my medical wing so that we may follow protocol, which in this case indicates withdrawing care from CT-1409 and letting nature take its course. Should he survive, we will of course send him on the next transport to Kamino for further evaluation.”

“Withdraw care…” Anakin’s jaw works silently for a long, uncomfortable moment. “You mean, let my man die, to conserve  _ resources _ .”

“Master!” Ahsoka cries out, struggling to stand again. Rex leans on her shaking shoulder just enough to make it impossible and meets Fives’ eyes across the tank, subtly shaking his head. The last thing they need is one of them trying to threaten a medic’s life right now. Rex is dreading his next encounter with Wolffe as it is. “Master, please. Echo deserves the chance to  _ live _ . You can’t just let him die!”

“I don’t intend to, Ahsoka. Trooper--”

“Stitch,” Rex supplies. Again, he almost pities the man, who is on the wrong end of a Skywalker glare that makes Separatist generals shake in their boots.

“Trooper Stitch, kriff the protocols. I’m ordering you to do  _ everything _ necessary to keep Echo alive until we rendezvous with the  _ Resolute _ , at which point you will transfer his care to our man, Kix and he can consume the 501st’s resources. I’ll personally ensure your medical requisitions are expedited, if that’s what it takes, but you and your team are not to let this man die if there is anything that can be done about it.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” is Stitch’s only reply. His eyes are hard as he snaps off a sharp salute and turns back to the panel displaying Echo’s vital signs, finally stabilized thanks to a few hours in bacta but still unnervingly low. 

“Thank you, trooper,” Rex adds despite his anger and his surety that it falls on deaf ears. Breaking the rules ingrained into them since decanting is not an easy thing to do for a shiny, he knows, even if technically a jedi general’s orders in the field supersede any regulation. 

\--------

Ahsoka doesn’t move from Echo’s side for hours, not quite trusting that Echo will be cared for properly if someone isn’t there to take an interest. It’s a new feeling for her, not trusting the troops, especially the medics. She doesn’t like it. Still, it’s much easier to focus on that than the lingering fear that Echo will slip away the moment she closes her eyes, through no fault of anyone’s.

Anakin had stayed just long enough to make sure that his orders were being followed before going to check on the rest of their men and report to the council. “We’ll talk about this later, padawan-mine,” he had said ominously before departing, Rex trailing after him with a demand that he be updated on Echo’s status regularly.

Fives stays. Loyal, stubborn Fives, who might just have tried to haul Echo off of Lola Sayu by himself, given half a chance. He pulls one of the uncomfortable magnetic chairs up beside Ahsoka’s and sits with his elbows braced on his knees, head hanging, watching Echo float in the bacta tank out of the corner of his eye. When Ahsoka isn’t watching Echo’s skin slowly knit back together with disgusted fascination, she watches him. 

Watches his hair, a little overgrown, fall over his ash streaked forehead in disarray. Watches his eyes, a few shades darker than Echo’s, struggle to stay open because even ARC Troopers could succumb to exhaustion eventually. Watches him pick absently at his kama when he thinks no one is looking to catch the nervous habit. Watches him watch the medics bustling around Echo’s tank to check his vitals every twenty minutes. Until finally, she looks over and finds him watching her back.

“He’s the last of my batchmates,” Fives confides, though she already knows. Ahsoka remembers the story behind his Rishi eel helmet and the Z-6 rotary blaster tattooed on his shoulder, shared over dry ration cubes while they sheltered in a bombed out farmhouse on a planet whose name she forgot almost as soon as they left it. All of the battles have begun to blur together. But not her troopers, not their stories. “I...thank you. Even if he dies, thank you for trying, ‘Soka. For giving him a fighting chance.”

“He’s not going to die,” she promises, even though she shouldn’t. She leans her shoulder into FIves’ and sets her jaw stubbornly, reaching through the Force to brush against the faint pinprick of life that still sustains Echo. “I won’t let him.”

Fives lets out a ragged breath beside her, and for a moment she thinks he means to chastise her. Instead he leans heavily against her in return and replies, “I believe you.”

The silence that falls between them is more comfortable this time. Ahsoka lets Fives’ steady breathing lull her into something like meditation as she reaches out and tangles herself with Echo in the Force. His mind is buried beneath layers of swirling pain and fear so thick it feels like battering against a durasteel wall, despite the pain medicine dripping steadily into one of the many tubes that runs into his tank, and she shivers as it compounds with the aches and pains of her own half-healed wounds, but doesn’t let it deter her. Beneath it all is Echo, and when she brushes against his mind he latches on desperately to the peace and calm she projects.

_ There you are, vod’ika, _ Ahsoka projects, closing her eyes and picturing the tenuous strands of the Force that connect them solidifying into a bridge, shoring up the ragged edges of his flickering life force. To Ahsoka he has always felt like green like summertime, like the scent of wild grass crushed beneath her feet on a cool, clear morning just before the full heat of the day, like nothing either of them ever knew growing up on crowded Coruscant or sterile Kamino. Like most of her lineage, Ahsoka has a limited grasp of Force healing, but she thinks of delicate growing things reaching toward the light as she pours energy into him, doing her best to soothe the pain and shore up the places that his body screams for attention. 

Not for the first time, Ahsoka curses that she knows a hundred ways to disable or maim a man with the Force, and so few to patch one back together.

\-----------

It takes the better part of two days to rendezvous with the  _ Resolute _ and the  _ Negotiator _ . Two days Echo spends suspended in bacta. Two days Ahsoka spends curled in an uncomfortable chair beside the bacta tank until she inevitably nods off and Rex or Anakin passes by and moves her to a gurney, only for her to shift back as soon as she wakes. Her own blaster burns are mostly healed, but the exhaustion of overexerting herself with the Force haunts her waking moments.

When Master Kenobi stops by on the morning of the second day, doubtless due to Anakin’s unsubtle and growing concern, Ahsoka listens with half an ear to his counsel on the dangers of overextending oneself and the Jedi way of letting go of attachment. When he seems finished she looks up at him tiredly, never taking her hand off of the bacta tank. 

“We let so many of them die, Master. Even the ones we could have saved. Is trying to save one of the few within my power to help attachment, or just valuing his life as much as the Republic citizens he was born to die for?” Another time, she might have shouted it. She has watched Anakin rage helplessly against the Council when their campaigns decimated the ranks of the 501st and gained nearly nothing for the Republic in exchange, and Master Kenobi throw himself into danger to spare his troops’ lives. She knows they value the clones’ lives. And yet, they would have left her friend to die, and now they advise her to leave him to fight on his own. 

Rather than rage and waste her energy, Ahsoka touches the back of her grandmaster’s hand and reaches into their Force bond, a shadow of the training bond she shares with Anakin. Through it she funnels the feeling of grass beneath bare feet, the taste of laughter, the thrill of free-falling from a gunship before the jetpack activates, the laughter of brothers, and the will to live as bright and all consuming as a supernova. _ Echo _ . As unique and worthy as any other being in the Force. 

“I’m helping my friend,” she says, “because it’s what we owe them all. Not just because he’s my friend.”

Master Kenobi hums, turning his hand over to squeeze hers. “Forgive me for underestimating you, Ahsoka. But please, do be careful. You cannot help him if you’re catatonic from exhaustion.”

“I’ll be just as careful as you always are, Master,” Ahsoka replies, managing to smirk at her wonderfully reckless grandmaster. Obi-wan makes an affronted noise, but before he leaves Ahsoka feels a rush of energy through the Force, bolstering her drained reserves. She squeezes his hand in return as it slips from hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come talk to me about clone feels on tumblr (same username, the link keeps breaking) and comment to keep me on track getting this thing edited and posted.


	4. Head Full of Sharp Knives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: discussion of euthanasia, ableism 
> 
> It just won't end, y'all. I keep thinking I'm done and then more happens.

Echo’s last clear memory is of heat and blinding pain. He is understandably confused to wake up  _ freezing cold _ and completely numb. Maybe this is death, he thinks distantly - an empty cold eternity. It’s not the worst fate he could imagine for himself, though he’ll be awfully upset if the taste of bacta lingers on the back of his tongue until the inevitable heat death of the universe.

Wait.

Death doesn’t taste of bacta.  _ Living _ does.

With monumental effort Echo manages to open one eye, which doesn’t get him anywhere because wherever he is it’s pitch black. More importantly, his right eye won’t open, and when he tries to lift a hand to find out why he’s pulled up short by a restraint on his left wrist.  _ Kriff _ , if he’s restrained that means he isn’t on the  _ Resolute _ . He’s been captured, and for some reason the enemy has decided he’s worth keeping alive. Echo doesn’t feel like sticking around to find out why.

For some reason his right hand is unrestrained - stupid seppies, probably thought one cuff would be enough to keep an injured clone down, they must not have ever dealt with an ARC Trooper before - and he uses clumsy, aching fingers to claw at the tangle of wire and tubing tying his other arm to what feels like a gurney. Something stings when he rips the mess away. Doesn’t matter, he’s had worse. The bacta has patched up all of his actual wounds and the strange numbness he feels has got to be from the sedatives they’ve doubtless been pumping into him - that sting was probably the IV line coming out.

Confident in his assessment of the situation, Echo heaves himself off of the left side of the gurney. His bare foot hits cold durasteel and holds his weight, though his knee doesn’t quite bend the way he expects. So far so good. It’s when he takes a second step, searching out a path with his right foot - with where his right foot  _ should be _ \- that everything comes quite literally crashing down.

Echo lets out an inhuman howl as he hits the hard floor, pain flaring to life across his body. He ignores it all to clutch at the stump of bandage and twisted flesh where his right leg is meant to be. Gone, it’s gone from above the knee, and the world spins sickly around him.  _ What use is a broken soldier? _ Echo thinks as soft hands touch his shoulders and darkness surges up to swallow him once more.  _ Would have been better if the Seppies killed him than left him life this. _

\---------

The next time Echo wakes there is something warm under his head. He remembers pain, and panic, but it all seems very far away. He isn’t cold anymore, and he can tell the room is well lit without opening his eyes. For now he keeps them closed and listens to the hushed voices coming from near his feet.

“You don’t understand, sir,” a clone is saying. The sound in Echo’s right ear is muffled, he can’t tell which trooper it is or if he even knows them. 

“No, I don’t understand.” That voice is definitely  _ not _ one of his brothers. It makes something in Echo twitch with the deeply ingrained need to stand at attention.  _ General? _ No, the General wouldn’t be at his bedside, no matter how much he cares for his men. “He needs a prosthetic, maybe more than one - rehab, treatments that we aren’t equipped to provide aboard the  _ Resolute _ . Now that he’s stable shouldn’t he go to Kamino, or one of the medical stations? That’s where we send all our badly injured troops. They can get him well and send him back to us in a month or two.”

“Not all of the men we send to the Kaminiise come back, sir.”

There’s a pause. Tension thickens the air and whatever Echo’s head is resting on - it must be a person, but that seems wrong - shifts restlessly. When the General speaks again - and it must be the General, Echo has realized - his voice has gone cold and flat. Like it does when they stumble onto atrocities committed by the enemy too late to do anything to help. “What are you not saying, Kix? Be very, very clear, because I’m starting to suspect I’ve been missing something right under my nose.”

“What Lieutenant Kix is saying, sir, is that men as badly injured as Echo,” Rex - Echo would know that voice is he was deaf and blind, the rumble of his ori’vod, easing the knot around his heart - falters uncharacteristically, just for the space of a breath. “They cost more to repair than their remaining value as soldiers. If we send him to Kamino he won’t be healed, he’ll be decommissioned. We’ll be assigned a new ARC Trooper to take his place by next week.”

“Decommissioned?” A softer, feminine voice, this time from directly above his head. He has half a second to process that his head is resting in the  _ Commander’s _ lap before Kix’s voice drags him back to the brutal reality of his near future.

“Euthanized, sir.”

“What? No! He’s a living person! We don’t put people down like livestock just because they need a new leg... do we ?”

“Echo doesn’t just need a new leg. For a specialized trooper like an ARC, they’d give him the leg,” leaving unspoken that a simple infantryman might not warrant such expense. “He needs another amputation. At the shoulder, if it’s expected to regain full function with a prosthetic. I can’t assess his vision until he wakes up, but his right eye sustained significant damage. He would need several rounds of scar tissue removal to regain full function in his remaining limbs, if he’s lucky. A hearing implant to bypass his right ear. And that’s not accounting for any lingering effects of the head trauma. There’s no sense spending months and millions of credits repairing a soldier for a war that might be over before he can even hold a blaster again when they can simply replace him with another unit. Sir, troopers like Echo don’t come back from Kamino. They never have.”

It’s the kind of assessment no one would give to the wounded man himself, not even a straight shooter like Kix. They all know the truth of it, but it’s too grim to discuss. Echo’s ears are buzzing and his empty stomach roils, wishing it had something to eject. He’d always thought he would die in battle with his brothers. Not heroic - clones don’t get to be heroes - but honorable and surrounded by his vode. That was as much as any clone could dream of. To know that he’s going to die alone in a sterile Kaminiise lab at the hands of the creatures that haunt his nightmares…

Echo doesn’t realize he’s crying until a small, callused finger touches his wet cheek, and by then it’s too late. For the first time since he was a cadet sealed in the safety of his own bunk, Echo  _ sobs. _

\----------

Ahsoka has been sitting cross-legged on a gurney with Echo’s head in her lap since the first time he woke up and fell out of bed screaming. Her legs have been numb for hours and her hands have long ago cramped where they rest lightly on Echo’s temples. At first she had been soothing the pain and turmoil in his mind, hoping to keep him calm the next time he woke, but not long after Kix and Anakin had begun talking she had to draw back to avoid making it  _ worse _ as fear and anger began to boil under her skin.

Now her hands shake as she wipes tears from Echo’s cheeks and looks down into the molten amber of the one eye he can open, the other bandaged shut. Her own eyes sting in a manner inappropriate for a jedi. Then again, for the entire last week she has behaved in a manner unbecoming of a jedi apprentice. She’s run out of energy to care, or to worry about the consequences. It can’t make it any worse to let her Master see her cry for a trooper.

“Master,” she calls, voice wavering. “Kix. He’s awake.”

As every pair of eyes in the room shifts, Echo lets out an honest to Force sob. Something in Ahsoka breaks when she realizes he must have been awake to hear at least the end of their conversation and she had been too consumed by her own feelings to even notice. She has seen troopers cry silently over fallen brothers on battlefields, shed single tears during the nightly remembrance, and bite back howls of pain as medics set to work on them with no stims to dull the pain. She has never seen one of them sob openly, helplessly, like the scared children they all are when they leave Kamino for their first battlefield.

When one of the men at the end of the men starts forward Ahsoka curls herself over Echo, snarling on instinct, only uncoiling when her Master’s hand settles warm and firm on her shoulder. Comforting, not chastising. “Echo won’t be going to Kamino,” he says, looking down at the scarred and twisted soldier shaking on the gurney. “Forge whatever paperwork it requires, but he stays here. They all stay here from now on. Whatever it takes.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” chorus two same-but-different voices from the end of the bed. Ahsoka doesn’t think she imagines the relief in both.

She bends over Echo, palms on his scarred cheeks, and touches their foreheads gently. “Did you hear that, Cho’ika? You aren’t going anywhere. You’re staying right here. You’re gonna live, Echo.”

She stays like that, repeating promises and reassuring nonsense into Echo’s singed hair, until Fives joins them. The bed groans under the combined weight of Ahsoka, two clones, and more medical equipment than any of them care to think about, but it holds. It holds while Echo shakes himself back to sleep; while Fives breaks down in turn with his face buried in trembling hands as it sets in that he won’t be alone, the last of his batchmates; while Fives falls asleep at the end of the bed. Looking at the two brothers curled around each other in the too-small space, with Kix puttering over the machines tracking Echo’s stable vitals, Ahsoka feels safe to let Echo out of her sight for more than five minutes for the first time in a week.

She doesn’t make it much further than the door to the small semi-private room Echo has been tucked away in before her half-numb, half-tingling legs give out. Shivering and exhausted, she slumps toward the floor. Strong arms catch her halfway down and sweep her up against a broad, familiar chest - Rex, dressed only in his blacks, which must mean it’s well into the night cycle again.

“You did good, little ‘un,” he murmurs against her montrals. “Rest now. I’ve got you.”

\---------

Ahsoka falls asleep halfway between the medbay and the officers’ suite she shares with the General, curled against Rex’s chest like a child, not that he has much experience with those. It’s times like these he realizes how young she is, how small still despite the fierce warrior she has grown into since the first days of the war - she weighs less than his full kit for battle and is drowning in the folds of one of General Skywalker’s discarded robes. And he’s never been prouder to call the tiny, half feral girl vod’ika.

When he enters the cramped, little-used office at the front of the jedi’s quarters, Rex finds Anakin slouched in one of the hard chairs with a confiscated bottle of the moonshine that the boys down in engineering brew in a storage closet. He hardly even looks up when Rex passes him and shoulders into the double berth beyond to law Ahsoka on one of the narrow beds. She stirs, mumbling something, as Rex pulls the thin blanket up over her.

“Udesii, ‘So’ika,” he murmurs. His ungloved fingers linger on one of the rough patches peeking above her collar where skin meets fresh scar tissue before he tucks the blanket firmly around her shoulders. Only after she turns her face into the pillow with a soft sigh does he back away, trusting that she’ll at least find a few hours of peaceful rest before the nightmares of war wake her up as they so often do. “Vor entye, ner vod.”

The door to the bedroom hisses shut, leaving him alone with the slumped, alcohol scented figure of his other jetii. Skywalker wouldn’t grudge him if he left without a word and returned to his own bunk to catch a few hours of sleep before the chaos of a new day with new orders begins. That’s half the reason he decides to stay, sinking into the chair across from Skywalker and accepting the bottle the jetii passes to him in silence. Apparently they aren’t bothering with glasses tonight.

That suits Rex just fine. 

He takes a long pull off of the bottle, feeling it burn all the way down and settle warm in his gut before he speaks. “Thank you, Gen--” he pauses, corrects himself deliberately as he remembers a night not unlike this one. Skywalker, with tired eyes and bruises on his cheek, smiling sadly at him over a shared bottle and saying  _ Call me by my name when we’re alone, Rex. It reminds me I’m still just a person, like all of you. _ “Anakin.”

“Don’t thank me, Rex.” Skywalker’s voice is scratchy, broken. Like he’s been shouting orders into the wind all day rather than sitting safe on his flagship dodging paperwork duty. “I’ve been letting your brothers die because I was too self absorbed to see what’s happening right under my nose.”

Rex sighs, takes another drink. He can’t honestly argue with that. What he has to say isn’t very pleasant either. “I...thought you knew, sir. We all thought you knew.”

Anakin lurches forward, his face twisting in anguish, and overbalances. His knees hit the durasteel floor between Rex’s boots hard enough that they both wince. “No! Rex, I would never...I wouldn’t. You have to believe me. I wouldn’t have sent my men to be culled like sick livestock.”

Rex shifts uncomfortably in his chair. It doesn’t feel right, having a jedi at his feet. It isn’t the natural order of things - but Anakin has proven time and again that he cares little for the strict rules and regulations the clones were raised on. He’s reckless and volatile, yes, but he’s also brave, and kind, and hopelessly desperate for validation that he’s doing the right thing. Just like so many of Rex’s other brothers - and isn’t it a strange thing, to think of these two jetii as family, when they could order him to his death tomorrow?

Setting that thought firmly to the side, Rex puts his hand on Anakin’s shoulder. His tunics feel scratchier than Rex would have expected beneath his fingertips. “I believe you, Anakin,” he murmurs. “I know you protect us as best you can.”

“I can do better,” Anakin promises, with the childlike earnestness he usually reserves for attempts to garner General Kenobi’s approval. “I can save more of you. I’ll find a way.”

Rex smiles sadly. Anakin’s realization has come too late for so many of his brothers, and will never help the billions that serve under less caring generals. But tonight, Echo is alive, and he’s going to stay that way. That’s enough. It has to be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter really is the last one. I swear.
> 
> Translations:  
> Ner vod: my sibling/friend  
> Vod'ika: little sibling  
> Vor entye: "Thank you"; literally: "I accept a debt"[


	5. Nothing but the Clouds Against Our Skin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the very long delay in this final chapter. I scrapped the original ending and then wrote five versions of a new one before I settled on this, and every word was like pulling fucking teeth.
> 
> trigger warning for lots and lots of internalized ableism

Later, Kix will tell him that he spent a month in the medbay. That there were six surgeries, and eight bacta dips, and endless injections and IVs and courses of medication. That the prosthetic leg they attached in the third week, the one that burns constantly with a pain it isn’t even capable of feeling, was built by the General’s own hands from generic parts for other limbs. 

Later, all of these words will mean something to him.

Now, all Echo knows is pain. Darkness. The taste of bacta ever present on the back of his tongue, the ache of an empty belly, the burn of lungs that can never seem to fill with enough oxygen. Sometimes there are cool hands on his temples and the pain fades to an ache. Sometimes there is a rough voice he recognizes as  _ brother  _ and  _ safety _ , a warmer one he recognizes as the other half of his soul. None of it lasts. But the pain does. It consumes him, gnawing at his sanity and his willpower, until Echo is sure there is nothing in the universe that could hurt more.

Until the horrible day that he takes his first, staggering steps on his new leg, cursing his way through the pain, and Kix smiles at him with pity in his eyes. Opens his mouth around words like _ lucky to be alive _ and  _ permanent nerve damage _ and  _ could walk without a limp someday _ .

Words that will mean something, later, when Echo’s blood isn’t roaring in his good ear. When they can mean anything more than what Kix isn’t saying now -  _ you’ll never be a soldier again. _

_ \---------- _

Fives is tired. Bone-deep exhausted in a way he hasn’t been since ARC training, and this time there’s no end in sight. He had ignorantly thought it might ease once Echo was released from the medbay, when he could finally sleep somewhere other than one of the hard chairs beside his brother’s bed or bacta tank, startled awake by even the slightest changes in the beeping of the monitors. If anything, having Echo back in the ARC barracks has meant less sleep and more worry for Fives. Laying flat on his back on the training mats in a little used PT room is the first time he’s closed his eyes for more than a moment in nearly two days.

The helmet resting beside his hip is painted to look like the one that was blown right off of Echo’s head on Lola Sayu. Even without changing his armor, it’s enough to fool most of the nat-born officers on board. As long as no one looks too closely it appears that Echo was released from the medbay two weeks ago in good enough shape to resume normal shipside duties, if not quite ready to deploy with the half of the 501st that was dispatched to reinforce General Windu’s forces in the mid rim. In reality, Fives spends his days pulling double shifts, pausing only long enough to swap helmets in between, while Echo struggles through physical therapy to regain control of his remaining limbs. Night cycles find them back in the training rooms, Fives watching helplessly as Echo pushes himself until he collapses and has to be half-carried back to their bunks.

It’s a pattern neither of them will be able to keep up for much longer. Fives just hasn’t had the heart to put a stop to Echo’s self destructive over-training, not when what his brother is fighting so desperately for is the chance to remain beside him.

With his eyes closed, the uneven thud of Echo’s fists hitting one of the heavy bags is almost soothing. It would be familiar if not for the subtle whir of the prosthetic leg shifting to support his weight. Fives can only hope that someday that, too, will be familiar - that Echo won’t be reassigned to some dead end desk job on Coruscant before they have a chance to find their new equilibrium. He knows - knows in his  _ bones _ \- that if they just have enough  _ time _ they can return Echo to fighting shape. Unfortunately time is the one thing nobody has to spare in a war.

Fives’ eyes burn at the thought.  _ Just exhaustion _ , he thinks stubbornly, grinding his knuckles into his eyelids until he sees stars. The bursts of light linger in his vision even when he opens his eyes, turning instinctively toward the door an instant before it hisses open, an excuse already on his tongue for Kix - only to find the Commander leaning in the doorway instead.

Her soft voice cuts easily through the sudden silence. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

\----------

Echo doesn’t have a response to that accusation. It’s true, after all. Echo has been avoiding Ahsoka since he was released from the med bay two weeks ago, and his only excuse is cowardice. ARC Troopers are meant to be the bravest of the brave, but then again, he isn’t an ARC Trooper anymore. He doesn’t know  _ what _ he is. 

“I can leave, if you want to  _ keep _ avoiding me,” she offers when he stays silent for too long. Out of the corner of his eye he can see her hovering in the door of the training room, hand braced against the frame, frowning softly. On his other side, Fives is rolling slowly to his feet - trying and failing to disguise the stiffness in his tired limbs. The expanded peripheral vision is still strange, his new mechanical eye sending too much information to his already strained mind. It feels like he’s had a nonstop headache since they started hooking up his new mech parts. Kix says it will fade with time as his nervous system adjusts - Echo just wishes it would adjust faster. He rubs at the tension above his right eye with a sigh, opens his mouth--

“No, don’t leave,” Fives cuts in before Echo finds his voice.

Ahsoka hesitates, her eyes flashing between the two of them. There are dark circles beneath her eyes, a frown pulling at the corners of her full lips. It doesn’t look like she’s been getting much more sleep than either of them. Or maybe it’s still - kriff, what had Kix called it, Force exhaustion? - lingering from all of the energy she had poured into keeping Echo alive. Guilt ties Echo’s stomach into knots, forcing him to nod his agreement, even though he still isn’t ready to face her. Doesn’t know if he ever will be.

“He’s right. Come in, please.” He waits until the door slides shut behind her with a quiet hiss before clearing his throat to continue. “I’m sorry, sir. I’ve got no excuse. I’ve been too cowardly to face you.”

Ahsoka makes a soft noise - hurt or confusion, or both, he thinks - as she makes a slow circuit of the room. “I think you’ve been incredibly brave, facing all of this.”

Echo huffs, keeping his back ramrod straight and staring across at Fives rather than watching the Commander’s progress. He runs the thumb of his good hand over the joint where his prosthetic leg melds with his flesh just below the hem of his PT shorts and feels the now familiar rush of nausea. “Not brave. Just faking it. I...I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“Kix says I’m never going to fully recover. I’ll only be fit for desk duty after this. You wasted all that time and effort, got yourself into trouble with your Master and the Council, and I’m not even going to be useful.”  _ I won’t even be able to watch your back _ , he doesn’t say. It comes out low and painful. He’s barely spoken about it, even to Kix and Fives - to admit it now to a superior officer, even one he calls friend,  _ hurts _ . Makes it  _ real _ . The soft hiss of breath that escapes Fives only drives that home.

“Oh, Echo.”

She sounds sad. Seeing the disappointment on her face might just be the thing that breaks him, so he continues to stare stubbornly at his brother’s familiar, tired eyes even as Ahsoka’s footsteps grow steadily closer. Even when they stop beside him, close enough that he can feel her breathing. Her fingers are strong, covered in scars and calluses, but they still feel small and fragile when she wraps them around his broad palm. At least his hands stopped trembling after the last round of bacta injections into his nerves. 

“I didn’t save you because you’re useful, Cho’ika. I saved you because you’re my friend, and because you’re a  _ person _ who deserves to live. If you never lift a blaster again it will have been just as worth it as if you could still take ARC missions.”

It’s a pretty story. Echo wants to believe it. But how can  _ anyone _ want to keep a soldier around who can’t be trusted to watch their back anymore? Soon enough they’ll see him for what he is, a waste of resources, and shuffle him off to some flimsi-pushing job on Coruscant to waste away, forgotten, while the jetii and his brothers continue to fight and die without him. The knowledge chokes him every time he watches Fives swap his own helmet for one painted like Echo’s old bucket and head back out to take a second shift, covering for Echo’s weakness, hiding the extent of his recovery from the nat-born command structure. Instead of saying any of that, he squeezes Ahsoka’s hand with fingers he can only partially feel and asks, “Why me? Why not all of the other troopers who might have been saved with that kind of effort? Ones who might actually have recovered…”

“I…” Ahsoka hesitates, and he can feel her tensing, her fingers stiffening in his. “I don’t know. It’s no excuse. There have been men I could have -  _ should _ have at least  _ tried _ to save before, and I didn’t, and I told myself it was because the mission, the battle, the good of the Republic came first. But the more of you all I watch die, the more that all seems like a bunch of osik. So when I...when I felt you get blown up and  _ live _ , something just broke. I couldn’t follow orders to leave you behind. I won’t ever leave a brother behind again, not if I can help it.” She sighs heavily, starting to withdraw. “But I...I understand if you’re angry that I didn’t act sooner, didn’t save more of your brothers. I’m sorry.”

Before she can retreat, Echo tightens his grip around Ahsoka’s hand and turns to face her fully. She is perhaps the first person not to react in some kind of shock to the pupil-less silver gaze of his new eye. Even Fives had flinched the first time Echo opened his eyes after that particular surgery. Another time, he might be thankful for her steadiness - right now he suspects it’s only because she’s too upset by more important matters to be startled by the monstrosity of his new face, with its twisting burn scars and dead-eyed droid gaze. 

“We don’t blame you for that.” Echo startles at the sudden nearness of his brother’s voice, badly enough that he sways off balance on his prosthetic leg. Two sets of hands steady him - Fives’ warm on his chest and shoulder, Ahsoka’s cool where they wrap around his elbow. “Sorry, ‘Cho’ika,” Fives rumbles, staying close even after Echo is steady on his feet again. “You’ve always had our backs, ‘Soka, even when it meant risking your own neck.”

Echo hums his agreement, leaning into Fives’ side for support. “Don’t apologize for following the same orders every one of us does.”

“Following orders is no excuse, not for a Jedi.” Ahsoka’s hands slide back down to wrap around Echo’s again. “I’ve studied enough history to know what atrocities can be justified in the name of  _ following orders. _ I...I worry that as this war drags on we have become numb to the horror of it, blind to injustices committed in our name. We’ve been sending you to your  _ deaths _ at the hands of so-called healers without even realizing it.” Her voice cracks and Echo watches as her eyes begin to shine. “What  _ else _ have we been blinded to?”

When the first tear slides down her cheek Echo thumbs it away without even thinking, just as she had done for him in the medbay on that first horrible day of consciousness. He’s glad for Fives’ supportive arm around his shoulders when she responds by throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder, clinging on as if for dear life. For a moment it’s hard to believe that this skinny girl who shakes as he wraps her up in his good arm carried him off of Lola Sayu nearly single handedly. Then again, he’s watched her work bigger miracles before. 

She doesn’t sob or wail or dramatically fall apart like the girls her age in holofilms. She cries like a soldier at remembrance, quick and quiet and over almost as soon as she started. The only evidence of her brief lapse in composure are her wet lashes and the small damp spot left behind on Echo’s shirt when she pulls away - after Echo wipes one last tear trail off of the white mark on her cheek, that is. Something warm sparks in his chest for the first time since he woke up in the medbay when she smiles weakly and leans into the touch.

“I’m so  _ sorry _ , Echo. I wish I could have done more. I  _ will _ do more, I promise. But,” she sniffs and straightens, though her arms are still looped around Echo’s middle. At this point she and Fives and sheer stubbornness are the only thing keeping him on his feet. He hopes she doesn’t notice, doubts he’s that lucky. “I didn’t come here to wallow in self pity. I came to tell you that it’s not just you. Master Skywalker commed an hour ago, the Council has resolved that  _ no _ trooper will ever again be sent back to Kamino and decommissioned for his injuries. I-I don’t know how, but they really didn’t know. The Council is going to make an announcement and a formal apology to the entire army tomorrow, but I thought you should know first.”

And suddenly, the arms around his waist and shoulders are no longer enough. Echo’s knees buckle, mech giving out just as surely as flesh. It’s a sign of how exhausted and stunned Fives is that he fails to catch Echo. Instead the three of them crumple to the floor together in a tangle of arms and legs, Ahsoka’s sharp elbows in Echo’s ribs and Fives’ armored knee caught awkwardly under his prosthetic one. It would hurt if everything didn’t feel so far away and unreal at the moment.

“You’re sure?” Fives rasps.

“The Council has already dispatched the Jedi MediCorps to take command of all of the Grand Army medical stations administered by Kamino. I swear on the Force, Fives, none of your brothers will ever be put down like stray dogs again.”

The way Fives disentangles himself from their pile only to lunge at Ahsoka, knocking her flat onto her back in what turns out to be a full body hug, would get him court martialed for inappropriate behavior toward a superior officer if there were anyone around to see. Echo could quote the regulations he’s violating in full. And yet he doesn’t worry for a second that any consequences will come of the action, because it’s not the  _ Commander _ that Fives has tackled in a childish display of gratitude. It’s Ahsoka, who has fought and bled beside them on battlefields that span the galaxy. But more importantly it’s So’ika, who eats with the men, who laughs with them, who held Echo’s hand in the medbay and drew the pain away when he thought it alone might be enough to kill him. Who saved Echo just because she could.

Their friend, their sister, who hugs Fives in return with one arm and reaches for Echo with the other. Echo ignores the aches of his damaged body and lets her pull him into the embrace, where the cool relief of her presence in the Force washes over him and leeches some of the pain away.

“There’s something else,” she murmurs into the quiet that has settled over them. “Master Skywalker said the Council offered you a job, Echo, as an intelligence officer with the Coruscant Guard. You’d be useful there. Important. But...we’d rather you stay with the 501st. If you’re interested, I think I’ve got a job for you…”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Echo cuts her off. The cold knot of dread that has been crushing Echo’s heart since he took his first, staggering steps on his prosthetic eases begins to ease. Against all odds, he’s going to be allowed to stay with his brothers. And maybe, just maybe, he can still be of use to them. “Whatever it is, I’ll take it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone was wondering, the voices Echo recognizes in the first scene are first Rex (brother and safety) and then Fives (the other half of his soul). 
> 
> I'm still not really happy with this ending but at least it's done, and we got the tears and the hugs. And I can get on with writing the Umbara AU that's going to follow in this 'verse.


End file.
